Cakirlar, CananSesen, Ridvan2024-04-242024-04-2420131866-95571866-9565https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-013-0125-8https://hdl.handle.net/11468/14922The much debated link between the collapse of urban centres in northern Syria and climate change at the end of third millennium BC is arguably one of the best known cases about human societies' struggle with the unpredictable nature of the Holocene. Fine-grained analyses of bioarchaeological materials offer excellent opportunities to overcome some of the difficulties encountered in such studies that tackle the effects of changing environmental and climatic conditions on human civilisations during the Holocene. This paper explains the results of a pilot study that uses archaeological freshwater clams (Unio elongatulus) from northern Syria as intermediary anthropobiogenic proxies to infer about the seasonal rhythms of local pluvial regimes and their possible fluctuations at the turn of the third millennium BC. Having secreted their CaCO3 in chemical and periodical accordance with the ambient environment and ending up at tell sites through human activity, these bivalves are suitable vessels of information about human ecology in northern Syria at the end of third millennium BC. Marked differences were observed between the isotopic (delta O-18 and delta C-13) compositions of shells from Tell Mozan, an urban site that continued to exist throughout the rapid climate event, and those from Tell Leilan, which went into hiatus at the end of third millennium BC. These results have important implications about the potentially severe effects of micro-environmental differences on distinct human communities inhabiting the same culturally unified region.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess4200 Bp EventMesopotamiaClimate ChangeSocietal CollapseMolluscan SclerochronologyStable Isotope GeochemistryArticle528594WOS:0003248930000022-s2.0-8487913843510.1007/s12520-013-0125-8Q1Q2